It was while I was an undergraduate, all those years ago, that many colleges began the custom of inviting selected professors to deliver a "last lecture" -- that is, what the teacher imagines he or she might say if offered one final chance to speak to a crowd of students. It has become a popular feature on many campuses.

One of those lectures became a phenomenon when, in 2007, a 47-year-old Carnegie Mellon University professor, Randy Pausch, delivered a memorable talk just a month after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The video of that appearance became a YouTube sensation, and a book expanding on it became a best-seller. Pausch died three months after its publication.

Most of us confront our daily lives -- whipping through or slogging along, depending upon our tasks and moods -- without much thought about how we would respond if we knew our time left on earth was short. But Pausch prompted many people to stop and think.

Jay Gallagher did, too -- prompted us to think, that is. He was a friend to many of us who practice journalism in the Capital Region; for more than a quarter century, he was the bureau chief here for Gannett News Service. His column sometimes appeared in the Times Union, and a few years ago we published an excerpt from a book he wrote on the state's political dysfunction. You also may have read his blog, which developed a following in recent months on timesunion.com.

One day this week a post on that blog was the most popular page on our site, drawing almost 10,000 visitors. It was a final post from Jay, created with the help of a longtime friend, alongside the report of his death, written by his two daughters. Jay died Monday at 63 of the same disease that took Randy Pausch and, now that I think of it, my own sister, when she was just 23. Pancreatic cancer is rarely anything but relentless.

Many people who didn't know Jay were moved by the candor, thoughtfulness and good humor they encountered on his blog, and they responded to his death with some touching blog posts. But Jay was a pretty unassuming fellow. I suspect he would wish that space like this in a newspaper be dedicated to something he considered important. And since I'm not qualified to write about the Red Sox or his beloved Emily, I will say a word on his behalf, if you don't mind, about state government. Until his final days, after all, Jay kept writing with his characteristic wit about what was going on at the Capitol. Earlier this month, for example, he noted that a massive state deficit stood alongside taxpayers' hostility to virtually every solution put forward by Gov. David Paterson and legislators. "No wonder lawmakers duck out of town every chance they get and Paterson doesn't seem to be around much either," he wrote.

Nor would it necessarily do much good to adopt reform proposals in Albany, Jay suggested, since reform is "anything a politician favors, from welfare reform to civil service reform to ethics reform, even if its effect is the opposite." In that regard, he urged "language reform," which would require politicians to say what they really mean.

What a mess Jay observed in what turned out to be the last legislative term he covered. A couple of legislators apparently assaulted people, several betrayed their friends, a few were sentenced to prison terms and state leaders responded to the worst economic crisis in generations by refusing to act.

"There is an emerging consensus," he wrote in March, "that the real problem we have both in the state and nationally is that voters don't want their representatives to make hard decisions. They want more entitlements and lower taxes, as well as less borrowing, and when the reps don't deliver, they tend to get axed."

But with admirable optimism, Jay clung to the notion that good journalism could help solve government's problems, if only people would pay attention to thoughtful reporting on key issues.

Maybe that outlook is what kept Jay's own last lecture going. In a post he dictated and his wife posted four days before his death, Jay reflected on his grim prognosis, and wrote what may well also have been his outlook, ultimately, on the beat he covered for so long: "Things might always change, though."